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Recently, there have been reports that Sony relaxed its position regarding its opposition to having porn on Blu-ray discs. These reports, however, are misguided as Sony has never banned adult content on Blu-ray, they simply weren’t going to go out of their way to facilitate it.

Nevertheless, many media journalists believed adult content was going to help determine the winner of the now defunct battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. As will be explained below, porn on Blu-ray is not the real issue, but if anything, these stories conjure up memories of the Sony Betamax and JVC VHS wars of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Let’s take a look back.

Betamax vs. VHS and Porn: A trip down memory lane

Sony’s Betamax was released in 1975, one year before JVC introduced its well-known VHS player.

After a battle that lasted for almost 10 years, VHS emerged victorious despite the fact that Sony’s Betamax was largely recognized as the technologically superior player. The reasons behind VHS’s victory cannot be traced back to one deciding factor, but one egregious difference between the two formats was that Betamax players could, at first, only play tapes that lasted up to an hour in length, clearly not long enough for a standard Hollywood movie.

Another popular theory, though impossible to substantiate, is that Sony’s refusal to allow adult content on its Betamax player allowed VHS to pull away and become the de-facto home video standard for nearly two decades.

Does porn on blu-ray even mean anything?

Sony’s stance regarding porn on Blu-ray is completely irrelevant for a few reasons. For one, Blu-Ray already seems well positioned to overtake HD-DVD as the next HD standard, porn or not. But more importantly, sales of adult-oriented DVD’s are slowing down significantly as consumers are flocking to the Internet to get their adult content for free.

As a funny aside and perhaps a testament to the glorious nature of 1080p!, many porn stars are opposed to Blu-Ray, and HD in general, because it reveals blemishes on their bodies that would otherwise not be noticeable. But I suppose that porn in HD would allow for some interesting titles. Move over “Debbie does Dallas” and say hello to “Patti does Pittsburgh as she goes to a Pharmacy to get Pro-active for her Pimples” and “Vainy Vixens 4″.